‘Go on.’
‘It was in early April, not very long after Agnes and I came to work for you. John had had a fever of the lungs in that vile place last winter, and nearly died. We were at our wits’ end.’
‘You could have come to me.’
‘It is for me to care for Agnes and John – me!’ Martin’s voice rose unexpectedly, on a note of angry pride. ‘I would not go running to you, my master, soft though I saw you were with Josephine and the boy.’ There was a note of contempt in his voice now. There, I thought, that was why he disliked me. He had an iron view of the place and responsibilities of servants and masters. It had led him to betray me rather than ask for help.
He pulled himself together, lowering his voice again. ‘I had arranged to have what money I could scrape together delivered to John in prison by a merchant of Leicester who travels between there and London, and who knew my story.’ He took a long breath. ‘One day, as I was leaving his London office, a man accosted me. A gentleman, a fair-haired young fellow wearing expensive clothes.’
I stared at him. ‘Was he missing half an ear by chance?’
Martin looked startled. ‘You know him?’
‘Unfortunately I do. What name did he give?’
‘Crabtree.’
‘That is not his real name. What did he say?’
‘That he was an acquaintance of the merchant, had heard of my son’s trouble and might be in a position to help. I was puzzled. I know there are many tricksters in the city, but he was well-dressed and well-spoken, a gentleman. He took me to a tavern. Then he said he represented someone who would pay well for information about you.’
‘Go on.’ Martin closed his eyes, and I shouted, ‘Tell me!’
‘He wanted me to report your movements generally, but especially if you had any contact with the Queen’s household. Or any radical reformers.’ He bowed his head.
I persisted. ‘And this was in April?’
‘Yes. I remember the day well,’ he added bitterly. For the first time he looked ashamed.
I ran my hands through my hair. Stice, the servant of Richard Rich who I had reluctantly worked with, had been spying on me since the spring. But as I thought it through, it began to make sense. April was when the hunt for heretics linked to the Queen was getting going. Rich knew I had worked for her; if he was able to link me to religious radicals, he might be able to incriminate her by association. This could have been a small part of his and Gardiner’s campaign to destroy her. But of course he would have found nothing. Then, after the campaign against the Queen failed in July, and Rich found me hunting for Greening’s murderers – and, as he thought, Anne Askew’s book – he could easily have switched from spying on me to using me.
Yet it did not add up: I had not burned my books till the end of July, when Stice and I were already working together, and if it was actually Rich who brought that matter to the Privy Council, then why had he helped me today, when it was likely to bring him into bad odour with Gardiner? But the paths Rich followed were so sinuous, it could all still be part of some larger plan. I had thought him sincere this morning, but Rich could never, ever be trusted. I had to talk this through with Barak.
Martin was looking at me now, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. ‘Crabtree gave me the money I needed to start to pay down the debts. But only little by little, and all the while the interest was mounting. Agnes, she was at the end of her tether.’
‘I know.’
‘And Crabtree kept demanding information.’ Brocket looked at me in a sort of desperate appeal. ‘I was bound to him, he could expose what I had done, if he chose.’
‘That is the problem with being a spy. Where did you meet?’
‘In a house, a poor place, barely furnished. I think it was used for business.’
‘In Needlepin Lane?’
He shook his head. ‘No, sir, it was at Smithfield, hard by St Bartholomew’s Hospital.’
‘Exactly where?’
‘In a little lane off Griffin Street. Third house down, with a blue door and a Tudor rose above the porch.’
It did not surprise me that Rich kept more than one place for secret meetings. He owned half the houses round St Bartholomew’s.
‘I suppose Agnes and I must go now, sir,’ Martin said quietly.
‘I take it she knows nothing of this.’
‘No, sir. She would not have let me do it. She would have argued, it would have upset her mightily – women, they do not understand the hard necessities men can be driven to.’ He attempted a quick half-smile, man to man, as though we could at least agree on the vagaries of women. I stared back at him coldly. Though he recognized how dishonourably he had behaved, he had still not apologized. And he had disliked me from the beginning, as I disliked him. That made the next thing I said easier.